


Apocalypse Take 2

by MyOwlWearsGlasses



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14x20 coda, Gen, exploding zombies if you're into that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 03:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18652441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwlWearsGlasses/pseuds/MyOwlWearsGlasses
Summary: Dean’s phone rang again. He checked the number and his stomach dropped. 666….“Who is it?” said Sam.Dean hit the answer button and held up the phone. “Crowley?”“Guess again,” said a different, but equally familiar voice. “Been a long time, Dean. Are you still as dull and self-righteous as you were twelve years ago, or are we going to get to have a little fun this time?”After a rather explosive escape from the zombies in the cemetery, the Winchesters get a call from a couple of old acquaintances who have a proposition for them....





	Apocalypse Take 2

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Supernatural Episode 14x20. The Major Character Death is Jack, who is already dead when this fic begins, picking up right where the episode left off. I know the season ended with Jack chatting with Billie in The Empty, but none of that's in this fic.

_Welcome to the end._

Dean tightened his grip on the iron makeshift stake he’d ripped from the cemetery gate and wished for approximately the four hundredth time in his life that zombies could actually be killed by shooting them in the head. It would be so much more convenient to take out members of the oncoming horde before they got within arm’s reach.

“Guys,” Sam muttered, and Dean felt Sam’s arm brush his right shoulder. Cas was pressed against his left. “I don’t know how well these stakes are going to work against a crowd.”

“You got any bright ideas, I’m all ears,” Dean growled. He lunged forward as one zombie, a bloated guy with half his face missing, got too close for comfort. He swung the iron bar and the zombie let out a howl and leapt back, clutching his smoking shoulder.

“How do you like that, freak?” Dean panted.

The zombies circled them, wary now that they knew their prey was armed, but Dean knew the shyness would wear off soon.

“Dean,” said Cas. “Do you have any of those angel-killing bullets with you?”

“No,” Dean said, kicking himself. But then, God jump-starting the apocalypse hadn’t exactly factored into his plans for the day.

“We have holy oil in the car,” Sam said.

“Well that’s awesome,” Dean said. “If only we could get to the car.”

“We need to clear a path,” Sam said.

“Well I’m sure if you ask politely, they’ll move for you.”

“Would you stop griping and help me think of someth--”

“Fuck this,” Cas said suddenly and with a wild yell, he pelted at a full run toward the crowd of zombies, spinning his iron stake like a club.

_No, Cas--_

Several zombies stumbled away, more drew back hissing and clutching burns where the iron had touched, and then Cas full-on tackled one, causing it to knock into yet more and landing five or six bodies onto the ground like bowling pins. Cas sat up long enough to stake the one he’d tackled through the heart with his angel blade, wrenched it out and skewered another one with his iron bar.

“Cas!” Dean shouted, already running toward his friend. He swung his stake into a couple of zombie heads and then nearly took out Sam when his brother grabbed his shoulder.

“Let’s go!”

“But Cas--”

“He’s drawing them off for us, _let’s go!_ ”

Sam was right. With the zombies piling onto the football tackle Cas had started, their way to the Impala clear –- clearer -- and the brothers took off, zigzagging through the cemetery. Dean leapt over a headstone, swung his stake into another zombie head and kept running, digging in his jacket pocket one-handed for the keys. _Get to the trunk, get to the trunk –-_

They skidded to a halt when they reached the Impala. “Cover me,” Dean said breathlessly as he unlocked the trunk. “You got pockets?”

“What am I, an amateur?” said Sam and then raised his eyebrows when Dean passed him a handful of grenades. “OK, that’s a good idea.”

All the lore said zombies were repelled by iron and that was all the Winchesters had ever used against them, but dead bodies were blown apart by bombs as easily as live ones.

It couldn’t hurt. Dean grabbed the holy oil and handed it to Sam too.

“How many do you think there are?” Sam asked as Dean went back to rifling frantically through the trunk.

“Looks like the entire fucking cemetery. Cas said Chuck raised the souls from Hell – who the fuck they burying in this place?”

“Dean, what could you possibly still be looking for?”

Before Dean could answer -– _ah ha! Found the ammunition!_ –- he heard a thump against the car and looked up. “Ah, shit.” The zombies were surrounding the car –- a couple had already climbed onto the nose.

_If they hurt my baby…._

Behind him, he heard a zombie shriek as Sam presumably slashed it with the stake. “Today, Dean!”

“I’m going, Sammy!” Dean snapped as he began loading. “Don’t you set one of those grenades off close to the car.”

“Yeah,” Sam grunted as he swung at another zombie, “because the car’s the priority right now.”

“You want to drive away from here? Then yeah, it’s a priority.”

Sam slung some holy oil on the zombies, then pulled his gun from its holster and began firing. The bullets didn’t hurt the zombies, but the holes they left immediately caught fire.

Dean grabbed a couple of grenades for himself and turned. “Sam, move!”

Sam didn’t need telling twice. He ducked and Dean, satisfied to see the horde between them and the cemetery was actually moving off as several of its members caught fire, pulled the string of one of his grenades and hurled it into the crowd.

There was a weird, whirring pause as the grenade sat on the ground and the zombies who weren’t on fire stared blankly at it.

_Bang!_

Dean covered his head and ducked next to Sam as chunks of zombie flew through the air, thumping into the Impala, splatting against headstones and, in the case of one bald head, crashing through the back window of Sam’s car parked nearby.

“I am not driving that thing home,” Sam muttered, but Dean didn’t care.

There was now a gap.

He scrambled to his feet and hurtled back toward the cemetery, leaving Sam to deal with the zombies by the car. When he was about 100 yards from the pile of zombies where Cas disappeared, he skidded to a halt.

Taking a deep breath, he raised the grenade launcher and took aim.

**BOOM!**

If Sam’s grenade had been loud and explosive, it was nothing to this. The zombie parts flew faster and farther this time, with the explosion shattering several headstones and angel statues (which Dean thought was appropriate, quite frankly). Dean dodged a meaty spine and ribcage that sailed past him and ran toward the explosion, blinking through the smoke as it cleared.

“Cas?” he said when he was close enough, his heart in his throat.

He heard a cough and then, from the small crater at the center of what used to be a pile of zombies, Cas sat up, his hair messy as the day Dean met him and his face and trenchcoat covered in soot and zombie gore.

“Took you long enough,” he growled.

“Come on,” Dean said, yanking the angel to his feet.

“I’m not going without Jack,” Cas said.

Dean swallowed. He didn’t want to leave the kid’s body here either, but -– “Cas, there’s no time. We have to get to the car, Sam’s --”

He was interrupted by the familiar rumble of his baby’s engine and then their section of the cemetery was awash in the glow of the Impala’s headlights. The car bounced over chunks of headstones, divots, and zombie corpses and swung in a wide turn as Sam reached them and opened the passenger door. “Get in!” he said.

“What about Jack?” Cas said.

“We’ll get him, just get in!”

Dean scrambled in the passenger seat as Cas did the same in the back and then Sam hit the gas. He drove over several zombies staggering toward the car and slammed on brakes when they reached Jack’s body.

_Please don’t let the kid be chewed on, please don’t let the kid be chewed on, it’ll kill Cas to see that—_

But Dean needn’t have worried, he realized as he opened the car door. The zombies had given Jack and his charred wings a wide berth. Dean wondered if there was enough divine power resonating from the shell of Jack’s body that the undead sensed it and knew to stay the hell away.

Cas lifted Jack the way he would have lifted a sleeping child, cradling him so that Jack’s head fell against his shoulder. Dean grabbed his stake to cover them.

“Uh, guys,” Sam said from the driver’s seat, “we’re about to have company.”

Dean swung around and saw yet more zombies –- at least 100, maybe more, not shuffling toward the car, as he’d expected, but clumping together to block the open gate of the cemetery.

“Go, go, go, go,” he urged Cas, who ducked awkwardly into the back of the Impala with Jack. Dean leapt back into the front seat and began rolling down his window. “What are these ugly bastards, zombie strategists?”

“What are you going to do?” Cas asked.

Dean thought frantically. He dropped the grenade launcher in the floorboard and grabbed the holy oil where it was tucked under the glove compartment. “Sam, you got any of those grenades I gave you left?”

“Just one,” Sam said, digging it out of his pocket. “You?”

“Also one. That should be all we need.” He patted the dash. “Baby, I’m so sorry for what I’m about to do--”

“Cas, you’ve got the best arm,” Sam said. He passed Cas the holy oil. “Throw it as hard as you can into the very center of the horde.”

Cas nodded and started to open the car door.

“And then get back inside and on the floorboard, because it’s gonna get hot,” Dean said.

Cas nodded grimly and straightened. He reeled his arm back and let the oil fly like he was an outfielder aiming for home. The jar sailed through the air, arching gracefully, spilling oil over the crowd of the undead and then disappearing in their midst.

Cas dove back into the Impala, slamming the door and using his trenchcoat to cover his head as he flattened himself to the floorboard as best he could. “Hit it, Sammy,” Dean said.

Sam hit the accelerator and the car flew forward. Dean grabbed the grenades and, one after the other, pulled the strings and flung them out the window into the crowd.

The horde burst into flames.

“Window up, Dean,” Sam said, and Dean cranked it frantically, pretty sure the heat from the fire was going to crack the glass anyway. He took off his jacket and covered the top of Sam’s head, then ducked down into the floorboard, trying to stay as small as possible.

Flames and the engine all roared, the zombies screamed, and several bodies hit the dashboard, and Dean heard the windshield crack. The driver’s window shattered, and Dean could only hope that was the only one that broke. He felt like his lungs were being seared as Sam drove through the flames, but he closed his eyes and pulled his shirt up to breathe into it.

After a couple of gut-wrenching minutes, they were free, and as the Impala rumbled away, a little worse for wear but still going, Dean dared to poke his head up from above the dashboard.

“Sammy….”

Sam’s shoulder was bleeding freely from where he’d shot Chuck earlier, and his left hand was blistered from where he’d used it to shield his face as he drove through the cemetery gates. He was taking shallow breaths in a way that told Dean he’d be coughing if he could afford to take his eyes off the road. “Can’t pull over,” he said through gritted teeth. “Can’t you hear the sirens?”

Of course the fire department was on its way after all that – and God knew that would be a gruesome call for them – but still. “You’re hurt --”

Cas leaned over the back of the seat and placed two fingers to Sam’s temple. Instantly the blisters were gone, and Sam took a deep, calm breath. His shoulder was still bleeding though, and Cas collapsed back into his seat. Dean saw that, while the zombies hadn’t been able to kill him, they left bite marks on his neck and hands, and his clothing was badly ripped. Being in the midst of holy fire couldn’t have helped.

“That’s all I can do for now,” Cas gasped. “Just let me … get my strength back….”

Dean fell back against his seat and closed his eyes. Fucking zombies. Fucking Chuck. Fucking everything.

There was some shifting in the back seat as Cas arranged Jack so that the kid’s head was on his lap. Dean opened his eyes and was relieved to see Jack’s body seemed to have made it through the whole ordeal unscathed.

They drove for several minutes in silence. Dean glanced at Sam and saw tears streaming down his face. He switched his gaze to the rear view mirror. Cas’ eyes were dry and staring listlessly out the front, but his hand was carding slowly through Jack’s hair.

Dean closed his eyes, remembered how he’d had a drink in Jack’s honor the first time the kid died. _Here’s to you, Jack, wherever you are._ They’d give him a hunter’s funeral for real this time. It was all they could do.

“I swore I’d watch over him,” Cas said finally.

“I don’t think Kelly’d expect you to take on God,” Dean said harshly, then regretted it when Sam sniffed and wiped his eyes.

“Now what?” he said.

Dean leaned his head against the window. “Not to be a downer, fellas, but I think this is it.”

“But -- ” Sam started.

“No ‘but,’ Sam!” Dean exploded. “God himself just started Apocalypse take 40 because he’s pissed at us. And the 39 that came before, apparently, all could have actually been handled in the blink of an eye _by him!_ I had to agree to archangel possession just to gank Lucifer – how do you think _this_ is going to go over?”

Sam was silent for a minute.

“I’m going to call Rowena,” he said finally. “You call Jody and Donna. Cas, can you call Jules?”

Dean turned his head away from the driver’s seat and stuck a finger in one ear to block out as much of Sam’s conversation with Rowena as possible as he fished out his phone.

Jody didn’t answer –- probably corralling the girls to face whatever fresh hell Dean was sure had just hit Sioux Falls –- but Donna picked up on the second ring.

“Dean, what the heck?” she said. “I was wrestling a meth-head into the back of the police car when it gets full dark! I’m talking midnight, no stars. And there’s some weird calls coming in –- crowds gathering at the cemetery –- please tell me those aren’t --”

“They are,” Dean said.

“—zombies. Ah, fudge.”

“I’d recommend a grenade launcher.”

“What?”

“Apocalypse now, Donna. The world is literally coming to an end.”

There was a full ten seconds of silence on the other end. Then Donna said, “Please tell me you’re --”

“I’m not.”

She took a couple of deep breaths.

“OK,” she said. “So what now?”

“Get to your safe house. Stock up on food, supplies, med kids, and every weapon you can get your hands on, and I mean every one.”

“I’m not leaving my town, Dean,” Donna said, and Dean could perfectly picture the stubborn set to her jaw. “I’m the sheriff.”

“Take your deputies with you. Hell, order an evacuation of the town. I don’t know where they’re gonna go though.”

“I’ll get ‘em all in the community storm shelter,” Donna said. “And I’ll get Doug to help me give the deputies ‘the talk.’ Maybe we can take some of these guys out before they do too much damage. Any idea how long this is gonna take to clean up?”

“No,” said Dean, who didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t going to get cleaned up. “Hey, be safe. And call me when you can.”

“Back ‘atcha,” Donna said.

Dean hung up in time to catch the end of Sam’s conversation with Rowena – “Yes, I’m telling you to bring the Book of the Damned, what is it going to do now?” – and clenched his fists.

He didn’t think he’d ever been this angry without the Mark of Cain burning on his arm. Angry at God. Angry that the stupid Apocalypse had started again. Angry that Jack had been murdered, helplessly, uselessly.

Sam hung up and said, “Guys, we need help. Like, real help.”

“Yeah, from who?” Dean said bitterly.

Before Sam could answer, Dean’s phone rang again. He checked the number and his stomach dropped. _666…._

“Who is it?” said Sam.

Dean hit the answer button and held up the phone. “Crowley?”

“Guess again,” said a different, but equally familiar voice. “Been a long time, Dean. Are you still as dull and self-righteous as you were twelve years ago, or are we going to get to have a little fun this time?”

“Bela?”

Sam’s head whipped around. “Wait, Bela Talbot?” Dean shrugged at him.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he said into the phone.

“I am,” she said. “Come now, Dean, you know what happens to a soul in Hell. Not all of us got rescued by angels.”

“So you’re a demon now?” Dean said.

“Crossroads demon.”

“Of course you are,” Dean said. _Once an unscrupulous, smooth-talking con artist, always…._ “And you have Crowley’s phone because…?”

“He left it to me, along with all his deals and three hell hounds -– well five, but I killed the two that killed me. Trauma, you know. Anyway, Crowley and I go way back –- since before I died, actually.”

“Are you in the same body? Why does your voice sound the same?”

“Preserving meatsuits was a specialty of Crowley’s,” Bela said. “And I’m quite attached to my body. If I remember correctly, you and your brother liked it too.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Well this was fascinating, and good catching up, but now’s not really a good time --”

“Oh, I know, it’s the end of the world. How long will it take you to get back to your bunker?”

“What?”

“I’m only asking because I’m standing outside it with ten other demons, and we could use a drink, but someone’s warded the place against us.”

Dean put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Demons at the bunker.”

“Why would she tell us that?” asked Cas.

“Put it on speaker,” said Sam.

Dean did so. “What’s your angle, Bela?” he asked. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Well, half the souls have just been freed from Hell, I hear the cemeteries are getting lively and I have a formerly dead demon here who just got back from someplace called The Empty, and she says she knows the perfect person to lead the armies of Hell against God.”

Dean gritted his teeth. “Lucifer.”

“Of course not,” Bela said. “Ruby says she’d take Sam over Lucifer any day of the week.”

Sam’s mouth dropped open. “Wait, _what?_ ”

“Ruby?” said Dean.

There was some shuffling on the other end. Then a new, but still familiar, voice came through the phone. “Sam?”

Sam’s jaw tightened. “Dean, hang up.”

“Sam, I know you’re mad at me --”

“You tricked me into freeing Lucifer from the Cage. ‘Mad’ doesn’t even being to cover it.”

“And you stabbed me to death with the knife I gave you,” Ruby said. “Don’t you think we should call it even?”

“No!” snapped Sam. “Dean, hang up!”

“Wait!” Cas sat forward. “Don’t hang up.”

“What?” Dean wrenched around to stare at Cas. “What the hell, Cas? You were the one who warned us about Ruby in the first place!”

“That was when I was taking orders from Heaven,” Cas said. “When we thought God wanted to protect creation. Now he’s trying to destroy it. You said it yourself -– we need help.”

Bela interjected. “Unfortunately, ten demons is all I could scrounge up for now,” she said. “But I hear you’re quite the leader in the hunter world now as well, Sam.”

“It’s true,” Cas said. “Jules said she’s bringing every Apocalypse World hunter left.”

Dean didn’t doubt the hunters would throw their combined weight behind Sam. They adored him, and they hadn’t left one burned-out shell of a world just to watch Armageddon a second time.

But whether they would be willing to work with demons….

Sam clenched his jaw, but Dean could tell he was listening.

“Lucifer’s still in the Empty,” Ruby said. “He’s not coming back, Sam. And I promise you I won’t try to bring him back. Apocalypse take 2 –- I won’t make the same mistakes again.”

Sam was silent.

“You _will_ have help in the coming battle,” said Bela. “If, that is, you can bring yourselves to work with the likes of Ruby and me again?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. Sam’s jaw was set, but his eyes were boring into Dean’s. Dean knew what he was thinking. Sam would work for –- would _lead_ -– the demons ... but only if Dean agreed to it.

Dean closed his eyes. He thought of the zombies rising from their graves, of demons coming back from the Empty. Of Donna trying to save her town. Of Apocalypse take 2 (take 6, actually, but Ruby had been dead for most of them).

Of his mom. Of Jack.

He opened his eyes, met Sam’s gaze, and nodded once.

“We’ll be there in two hours,” Sam said.

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote the entire first section in my notebook with Dean and Sam just shooting all the zombies and only THEN remembered that Supernatural!verse zombies aren't like the ones in Zombieland. I am proud of the bit with Cas and the grenade launcher though. (Remember how he didn't so much as blink when Ketch fired one at the Secret Service van in Season 12? *fans self*)
> 
> Also I don't know how realistic it is for them to drive through fire to get out of the cemetery, but I figured it worked for Crowley and his black Bentley in _Good Omens_ , so....
> 
> Please let me know if you liked it or if I left out an Oxford comma! Love to all the Supernatural fans! *blows kiss*


End file.
